Dayton Literary Peace Prize distinguished achievement winner named

Book groups, get ready!

At this year's Dayton Literary Peace Prize event on Nov. 20, the 2016 Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award will be given to writer Marilynne Robinson. The prize, which honors a writer's entire body of work, includes a Michael Bashaw sculpture and the monetary award of $10,000.

The bestselling novelist and essayist is being honored for novels and essays that offer “moving, graceful and thoughtful meditations on modern life, spirituality, science and politics.”

ABOUT MARILYNNE ROBINSON

A native of Idaho, Robinson earned acclaim with her 1980 debut novel, “Housekeeping,” a story about two sisters that explored universal themes of family and home. Twenty-five years later, she produced her award-winning Gilead trilogy — three novels exploring the concept of spiritual grace against the backdrop of a mythical Iowa town. Her nonfiction books include the essay collections “The Givenness of Things,” “When I Was a Child I Read Books,” “Absence of Mind” and “The Death of Adam,” as well as the environmental wake-up call “Mother Country,” which was a 1989 National Book Award Finalist for nonfiction.

In 2012, President Barack Obama, a self-avowed fan of her work, awarded Robinson the National Humanities Medal and in 2015, the president interviewed Robinson for The New York Review of Books.

“In her fiction and in her essays, Marilynne Robinson is concerned with the issues that define the Dayton Literary Peace Prize: forgiveness, the sacredness of the human creature, and delight in being alive and experiencing the natural world,” said Sharon Rab, founder and co-chair of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation. “With luminous, deeply moving prose, she explores the causes of strife in a family, in a community, and in the world, while ultimately demonstrating the universal healing power of reconciliation and love.”

Robinson said: “I have had the privilege of seeing for myself how books live in the world, how readily they can cross all sorts of borders and boundaries, how important they are in sustaining a human conversation through and despite the frictions that arise among nations, how intensely they can be taken to heart anywhere.

Among the previous winners of the award are Studs Terkel, Elie Wiesel, Gloria Steinem, Wendell Berry and Barbara Kingsolver. Finalists for the 2016 Dayton Literary Peace Prize will be announced on Sept. 13.

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